I must have been 15 or 16 years old. Dad and I were on a day trip up the North Shore of Lake Superior fishing Brook Trout on one of the many streams he knew up there. On some goofy back road. There must have been too much of a pause in the conversation.
I ......... have a joke.
He smiled and continued ....
Once upon a time, there was this old man. He met this young woman and they fell deeply in love.
The old man decided he would ask her to marry him. She refused. The old man was so old that he could no longer get an erection and she didn't want to marry someone she couldn't have sex with.
The old man became very sad because he couldn't marry the woman he loved.
The young woman saw how sad he was and because she loved him too, suggested they go to a doctor to see if anything could be done. So, they went to a doctor who gave the old man a thorough exam. The doctor sat them down and said he would be able to help them by performing a surgery that would allow the old man to get an erection. They were overjoyed.
The old man asked how much the surgery would cost. The doctor said $50,000. The old man asked if the operation didn't work of he could get his money back. No, the doctor said, there could be no refund. The old man became sad. He was on a fixed income and couldn't afford an operation like that. The young woman was said because she couldn't help.
The doctor saw this and took pity on them, and offered to try a new, but unorthodox procedure that was nearly 100% successful and people were very happy with the results. The doctor said, he would like to be the first person in the country to do this procedure. He said that he'd have to charge $1000 to cover some costs, but if they weren't 100% satisfied with the results, he's refund every penny. The old man brightened and asked how the operation would work. The doctor said that they would take the trunk from a baby Elephant and graft it in place of his penis. The old man was skeptical of such an outrageous idea, but the doctor assured him that it worked extremely well. The old man thought about it and decided to go ahead with the operation.
The operation was a success. They found that the baby Elephant trunk worked better than they could have hoped for. There were overjoyed and started making plans for their marriage. The old man had yet to meet her parents so they decided to get together over dinner, someplace nice, and get to know each other. So they met at a nice restaurant. They had a few cocktails and then ordered dinner. The old man ordered a steak with a baked potato. While they waited for their order to arrive they chatted amicably. The cocktails the young woman had went straight to her head. Slyly, she reached over to the old man, unzipped his pants and started playing with the baby Elephant trunk.
Finally their order arrived. The waiter set the old man's order on the table. As the waiter turned away, the baby Elephant trunk suddenly reached up, grabbed the potato and ZIP ..... ducked back under the table with it.
The young woman's mother caught this out of the corner of her eye, but wasn't sure about what she thought she saw. She looked over the old man who was sitting there with this odd look on his face. She had to ask, so she said that she thought she saw him doing something very unusual and was it possible for him to do it again.
I'm sorry, the old man said, but I don't think there's room up my ass for another potato.
I laughed so hard I almost got sick. It was traumatic.
Dad was laughing, too.
I laughed at the joke but I also laughed at the shock of the moment. My dad had never told me a joke like that before. It was so ...... out there. In that moment, I began to see my dad as not just my father; he was a guy, too.
Since then, I've heard a million jokes and forgot just about all of them. This one stayed with me, burned into my memory as the first totally outrageous joke my Dad ever told me, and one of the funniest I've ever heard. Not a bad memory to have of one's father.
Nothing like having a good laugh with the Old Man. It doesn't get any better.
